The Circle Stage
by Mnemosyne Nine
Summary: Elseworld. A Remy LeBeau with powerful, uncontrolled empathic abilities arrives at Professor Xavier’s School for the Gifted. In Progress.
1. The Arrival

The Circle Stage  
  
Elseworld. A Remy LeBeau with powerful, uncontrolled empathic abilities arrives at Proffesor Xavier's School for the Gifted.  
  
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." – Shakespeare, Hamlet  
  
Remy LeBeau arrived at the Mansion halfway to insane.  
  
There were colors everywhere. They burst and sparkled and danced in front of his eyes (godforsaken, devil-touched eyes) and made it hard to see, and it had taken such a long, long time to go to the place that he was going to. The colours made the horizon waver like a desert with snow and ice and trees all around. The colours captured his thoughts and swirled him here and there and everywhere.  
  
Sometimes, when he was closest to sane, he remembered that he was feeling emotions, not seeing colours, and that there wasn't really sparkles inside him at all. Sometimes, when he was closest to sane, he felt an emotion – despair – and knew it for his own.  
  
Mostly he kept walking, because even when he was his farthest away from sane he knew where he was going. When he reached the mansion he walked right into it.  
  
The sounds – bang, thump, bang, scratch, thump – went unnoticed until lunchtime, because all the students were in class, and there was no one around. And someone trying to walk through a solid outside wall can make surprisingly little sound.  
  
In fact, it wasn't until the Professor moved towards the lunchroom (with it's big, wide windows) that Remy managed to manoeuvre himself around (bump, scratch, thump) to the point where he could walk through a window, in his arrow-straight, undeviating line towards the professor (he was slightly more than halfway insane at this point).  
  
His appearance outside the window and subsequent move through the window (it took him several tries) took the residents of the mansion so by surprise that Remy made it almost all the way to professor Xavier before being restrained by Logan and knocked unconscious.  
  
Though he was quickly removed down to the underground tunnels, several of the students reported nightmares for several weeks subsequent to the events.  
  
As Scott would be later heard to despairingly remark: "Leave it to Gambit to make an entrance." 


	2. The First Day

So you lift your head and cry aloud  
  
Playing to the darkling crowd  
  
Of circled watchers in the dark  
  
And casting shadows from your heart  
- The Circle Stage  
  
Remy LeBeau spent his first day at the Mansion dreaming the colourless dreams of the unconscious.  
  
Up in the hallways and classrooms of the mansions students spoke in whispers and cast sidelong glances at the floor. Details were fuzzy and contradictory – no one had gotten a good look – but everyone knew that their world had been intruded upon.  
  
So they spoke in whispers, swapping contradictory and confusing stories. A crazy man, sobbing and drooling, had broken into the Mansion and attacked Xavier. No – an assassin, waving a gun and shouting anti-mutant slogans, and had broken through the window and tried to kill Dr. Gray. Or else – a sobbing mutant in tattered clothing had hurled himself at Xavier's feet and requested sanctuary from murderers.  
  
No one quite knew what he looked like, not even the ones who had been there. Most, however, agreed that there had been something funny about his eyes.  
  
Down under the floor where the students were gazing, Dr. Jean Gray, Professor Charles Xavier, and Ororo Munroe were holding a hushed conference.  
  
The man who had walked across half a state and through a window to reach the bright light in his mind that had been Charles Xavier lay unconscious on an examination table, bathed in an unflattering, white light. His skin seemed almost translucent, lying like a very thin veil over every stripped and gaunt angle of him.  
  
As they spoke, Ororo cut and brushed the long, tangled mass of his hair as Jean finished dabbing antiseptic on the last of his scrapes. Professor Xavier sat to the side, studying the man who had so rudely interrupted lunch.  
  
"His mind is completely open," said Professor Xavier. "But for some reason I can't access his thoughts at all."  
  
"It's like static," Jean observed thoughtfully. She finished dabbing the last small cut and carefully capped the bottle, stepping away from her patient to face Xavier. "It's like the TV is on, but there's no signal coming through."  
  
"And you are certain he's some kind of telepath?" Ororo asked.  
  
Xavier nodded. "Almost certainly. I can sense that much about him. He has enormous receptiveness and what seems to be moderate broadcasting abilities. But what he was broadcasting was distorted: jumbled and chaotic. I would guess he has no control over what he receives or broadcasts, which would account for the state he arrived in."  
  
"The really remarkable thing is that he managed to arrive at all" Jean said. "In the state he was in, it's hard to believe."  
  
"He was looking for me," said Xavier. "That much I managed to pull from his mind. I can only surmise he sensed me somehow – but how he was able to know I would be a source of help, I do not know."  
  
"If he was under the influence of whatever thoughts he was receiving, perhaps he was simply drawn to the most powerful source," Ororo suggested, finishing with her brush and her scissors, gathering them up and moving gracefully to put them away. Less certain than the two telepaths of the subtleties here, her every movement seemed precisely centred. She was concentrating with every fibre of her being, feeling some deep, as-yet unnamed unease.  
  
"Perhaps," said Xavier, who felt the same unease, carefully hidden. "The question, now that he is here, is how best to help him."  
  
Ororo was silent, standing away from the table. Jean looked carefully down, reaching inside herself for tranquillity.  
  
The man on the table lay silent and still. No movement betrayed his continuing life, not even the expected rise and fall of a breathing chest. Only by reaching out and holding a hand above the man's cracked, dry lips could Jean feel evidence of his continuing existence, in the soft, hitched puffs of his breath.  
  
Xavier was speaking again, and Jean looked up at him with effort.  
  
"It's the receiving that must be the problem, I'm sure of it. Without shields he would be much in the same state you were, Jean."  
  
"Only for a much longer time."  
  
"That can't be helped. We will try waking him tomorrow, when he is more stable. I will attempt to shield him and assess the extent of the damage to his mind."  
  
Jean looked down again, to where her hand had moved to stroke the now- tamed, rich auburn hair. It seemed strange, she thought, so much colour to crown someone so pale.  
  
"Jean?" Xavier prompted, softly.  
  
"There is danger in him," she said softly. Her voice, hazy as the air in summertime, seemed to come from somewhere outside of herself. The three of them stood, silent then, beside a pale, strange man in a white, cold room. Knowing and sharing this sudden, troubling truth.  
  
There was so much possibility.  
  
A single man stood in another white, cold room, examining all the possibilities in his mind. It was a satisfying thought, so much power, so much control. Like a beautiful, beautiful song, just beginning, like the very first steps of an intricate dance.  
  
So much possibility. That was the reason for it, more than anything else. Let Xavier have his precious X-Men; let Magneto have his puppets and his bitch. Let the whole world build its weapons and start its wars, as it had since time immemorial.  
  
Soon, now, he thought to himself. The dance has already begun. 


	3. Interval One

Interval One: Logan  
  
Logan was an inward-seeking man.  
  
Self-healing. Strong body, strong senses. Few explanations, few words in general. Someone who spent a great deal trying to understand his own mystery. An inward-seeking man.  
  
Still, no one ever denied Logan had his animal side. Instinct was something the Wolverine had more of than most. Safe to say, whatever Logan paid attention to was worth paying attention to.  
  
At the moment, there was nothing he could have pointed to. No sound, no scent, no swirl of air betrayed a reason for the unease that was building in the back of the Wolverine's mind. But the unease was growing. The animal instinct in Logan was saying something it had rarely said to him before: Run. Run, and hide.  
  
Logan was a man before he was anything else, though, and Logan had never been a man inclined to run away. Instead, he paced through the grounds and halls of the mansion like a hunter on the prowl, graceful and fluid, senses extended to the utmost and body poised. Those he encountered gave him a wide berth, and curious looks.  
  
As he paced through room after room, he cast his mind back into the scattered pieces of his memory. This was not the feeling of a battle coming; he remembered fighting and death in a field of mud, and the scent of the air before an attack had not been the same. It was not the feeling of an ambush either – the air had no tint of malice to it, no scent of stealth.  
  
Confrontation – no. Argument – no. Hatred, anger, rage? No, no, no. There was no storm on the horizon, no earthquake or fire. No natural disaster at all (Logan remembered all these things, if not when or where they had occurred). This was not even the feel of wanting to move on, to wander away and find some new, strange place; Logan remembered that feeling many times, but not now, and not here.  
  
Logan had found a place here; with the X-Men, the mansion, Xavier's school. Logan felt that he belonged here, for the first time in a long time. Logan had no intention of going anywhere.  
  
Run, his instincts whispered at him. Run, and hide.  
  
It was driving Logan crazy. 


	4. The Awakening

Chapter 3: Awakening  
  
Remy LeBeau came into awareness surrounded by a deep, gray fog.  
  
It stretched around him in all directions; formless, featureless, empty. Alone. No horizon divided it; no distances shaped it; no shadows defined it. A deep, gray fog.  
  
I am not here, he realized, aware suddenly of only that; awareness. Without body, or anything physical at all.  
  
I am, came a voice out of nothingness, a voice in his mind.  
  
And so Remy LeBeau met Jean Gray for the first time. 


	5. Glimmerings

Chapter 4: Glimmerings

Remy LeBeau was sane once more, but at the moment, that hardly seemed like an advantage.

His mind, after all, was apparently an exceedingly boring place, a fact that Remy found to be something of a let-down. No matter how hard he concentrated, he couldn't seem to affect that endless, featureless, _dull_ horizon of gray. It didn't seem to matter that this was apparently his own mind.

_You're afraid of your own powers_, Jean Gray had said. _That's why you can't control them_.

Jean Gray, who was currently resting, and who had left him totally, utterly, and completely bored. And until she came back, he was left pacing a fictional space inside his own head, trapped by artificial shields that Professor Xavier had placed around his mind.

Remy concentrated on the space in front of him, trying to will a table, chair, and deck of cards into existence. Despite Jean's admonitions to stay calm, he felt the frustration in him building as they stubbornly refused to materialize.

"I ain' afraid!" he shouted, turning around in a circle. "I ain'! Come on! " He pointed at the ground in front of him, willing the mindscape to reform.

The gray stayed stubbornly gray, and empty.

Remy felt the frustration in him building to intolerable levels, but there was nothing handily convenient to have a temper tantrum at, not that that's what he would have called it. He spun in a circle, kicked the ground and refused the impulse to fall down and beat his hands on the floor, breathing heavily.

Behind him, the spot he had just been glaring at... rippled. The horizon darkened almost imperceptibly as Remy stood, fists clenched at his sides, trying not to scream with frustration.

Outside in the real world, Xavier put a hand to his head in sudden pain, losing the thread of the conversation he had been holding with the newly returned Scott Summers.

Scott frowned slightly, noting the tired lines apparent on Xavier's face, deepening now in a grimace of pain.

"Professor, are you all right?" he asked softly, as Xavier continued to be silent, holding his hand to his head.

"It appears our newest guest is in some distress," Xavier said softly, looking up. "Come with me to the medbay, Scott."

"Newest guest?"

"Yes. He's some sort of psi, though I am unsure as to the exact nature and extent of his abilities. He... arrived at the mansion several days ago."

Scott followed as the Professor turned his wheelchair and headed for the hallway. Something in the way the Professor had said... "Arrived?"

"His powers are completely uncontrolled. I don't know how or why he managed to find me, he was... not lucid when we found him. Or I should say, he found us. He walked straight through the dinning hall window."

"Walked through the window?" Scott repeated, feeling confused.

Xavier glanced up at him as the elevator down to the medlab opened up, then wheeled himself inside slowly. As the doors closed around him and Scott he felt the closeness as a stifling presence, unusual given is usually exquisite self-control.

He sighed, feeling frustrated at his star student's unusual denseness. "I did mention he was not lucid. He was somehow drawn to my presence, and chose the direct route to reach me, I assume."

"So all we know is that he's some sort of psi?"

"I did not say that," Xavier said curtly, trying to stifle his impatience. He wheeled out as the elevator doors open on the white, empty corridor preceding the Medbay.

"I managed to shield his mind somewhat, allowing Jean to communicate with him by pulling him into a conscious awareness of his mental landscape. His name is Remy LeBeau; apparently he's always had something he refers to as his "charm", but the full onset of his powers did not begin until several weeks ago. That's unusual enough; he's well over the normal age for the full development of his mutation."

"And you're sill shielding him?" Scott asked.

"Of course I am," Xavier said coolly. "He was nearly out of his mind. Until he learns to control his receptiveness himself, it would be cruel to do otherwise."

"I didn't mean to suggest anything by it," Scott said diffidently, trying to keep himself from being annoyed with the Professor's curt tone. He wondered whether it was simply this new mutant that seemingly had Professor Xavier wound so tight. _Or it could be the upcoming summit_, Scott thought, annoyed with himself for feeling annoyed. _Anyone could be forgiven for being a little snappish_.

The door to the Medbay slid open and Professor Xavier moved inside, not commenting, and wheeled to the side of the still figure within. Scott followed, silent as well. Coming to stand beside Xavier at the side of the bed, he glanced down at the pale features of the boy lying there.

His irritation forgotten, Xavier was examining the boy's face closely. Hank had already noted Remy's unusual eye colour, but for a second it had almost looked like the skin of his eyelids had gleamed red...

There was nothing now. Beside him, Scott stood thin-lipped and silent, and suddenly Xavier wondered at his own recent behaviour. It was unlike him to be so snappish with his favourite student.

Remy LeBeau lay silent and still, almost as pale as the room itself. But there was something – not right here.

A small, half-smile curved his face as an answer to the puzzle presented itself to him, as simple as that.

"Excuse me for a moment, Scott." Xavier said. "I've just had an insight I'd like to pursue with our young friend here. It will only take a moment."

He barely waited for Scott's nod before closing his eyes and concentrating on the telepathic shield that connected him to Remy, moving his awareness along the length of the link to rest close to walls of the shields he had erected around the young man's mind.

He felt... _frustration_.

It really was that simple, Xavier mused, withdrawing as quietly as he had come, boosting the shields between their two minds as he went. _If he can influence me_...

"My apologies, Scott."

Xavier's most valued protégé stared intently at him, trying to gather clues as to what had his mentor bothered so. But Xavier's face gave away no clues. "Shall I ask?"

"There isn't much to tell." Xavier swept his arm in an expansive gesture towards the bed. "Despite appearances, our young friend here is very much awake."

"How so?"

"He's in a state of... heightened consciousness." At Scott's uncomprehending look, Xavier clarified further. "Without shields or control over his natural abilities, he's a danger to both himself and the students. But the only way for him to learn..."

"...is to be conscious enough to be taught." Scott finished, understanding.

"Precisely." Xavier nodded, pleased. "He's aware but not actually projecting outside his own mind at the moment. And with Jean resting, I suspect he is quite bored."

So much for a relaxing weekend, Scott thought resignedly. With the pace events had been moving at inside and outside the mansion, he and Jean had been looking forward to snatching an unusual amount of quality time together.

Xavier must have noticed the disappointment Scott couldn't quite keep off his face. "I'm sorry, Scott," he offered. "I know you and Jean were planning on getting away this weekend, but this has to take priority. We can't keep in coma forever – his muscles will atrophy."

"I know. Jean would never turn her back on another telepath, either."

"His situation now is very similar to her own previous troubles," Xavier said softly. "She has established a fairly good rapport with him so far, which I'm glad of. Shielding him so completely takes a considerable amount of effort."

Scott frowned.

"Nothing too burdensome, Scott," he added reassuringly. "In the meantime, I'm afraid our young friend will have to cope with his frustration until Jean is ready to speak with him again."

As he spoke Xavier was turning, heading back out towards the hall and elevator. Scott followed, musing on the implications of the new student and Jean's sudden role as mentor. Neither man spoke as the door slid shut behind them.

The medlab was silent, and still. And if there was a slight glimmer of red under closed eyelids, there was no one else there to see.

Author's note:

3 things: First, I'm terribly, terribly sorry it's taken me so long to update. I promise I'm not quitting on it, but there has been... stuff. Stuff always interferes with my creative plans. Sorry!

Second, thanks so much to everyone who's reviewed my story! Your feedback and encouragement is greatly appreciated.

And third... yes some of the chapters are unfortunately short, especially that last one, but I just can't resist a good closing line, it seems. The next ones will be longer, and we'll be getting in to the meat of the plot soon, I promise. Promise!


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